Perfectionist Tendencies Begin In Your Brain

Transcript for Episode 249

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:00:00]:
As a perfectionist, we have this unique ability to imagine what could be, and we also have the compulsion to make it happen. This is what scientifically separates perfectionists from pedestrians, AKA people who are not perfectionistic. That ability is an asset, and it becomes a liability when the what could be drifts into the dystopian horror of every possible way things could potentially go wrong and I could die. Your brain starts predicting an endless parade of potentially awful, horrible, no good scenarios. If you are ready to burn bright instead the is Perfectionism Rewired, the podcast. Welcome to Perfectionism Rewired. Today, we're talking about how your perfectionist brain actually works, how to identify if you are using your brain the wrong way, and what you can do about it. When we think about how our brain works, our experience is that we observe something, we process it, and then we react to it.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:01:22]:
Like with overwhelm, for example, you observe your plate is super full. You process it as everything needs to get done and all needs to get done by me and all at the same time. And then you react with, I'm so overwhelmed. When you look at how your perfectionist brain actually functions, that's not what's happening. So let's get into it. We're going in our magic school bus inside your perfectionistic brain. Seat belts, everyone. So here we are inside your brain.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:01:54]:
You can see that your brain is trapped inside a dark, silent box, also known as your skull. And over here, we can see that your brain's number one priority, under the job description, it says, Brain's number one priority, to regulate your internal systems in the most efficient way to keep you alive and well. You want to think of your brain as the CEO, chief efficiency officer. The most efficient way to regulate any complex system, like a human, is to run a model to predict what's going to happen and then correct it when necessary. It's simply more energetically efficient for your brain to predict and adjust than it is to react. Now, over here, as our magic school bus rises up, we can see that your entire brain is receiving continuous streams of sensory data from your person. Over here, we get what's coming from your eyes. Over here, what's coming from your heart.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:03:08]:
Over here, your muscles, your ears, your glucose levels. It goes on and on. And simultaneously, while your brain is receiving this continuous streams of sensory data, your brain is always making a prediction about what that sensory data will be in a moment from now. The way that your brain does that is predictively. So when we talk about how your brain operates predictively, it's not like the information comes in, and then your brain goes, what's that? Let me ponder that for a little bit, and then I will decide what this person's gonna do. No. Your brain is making a prediction about what the sensory data that it is going to receive will be in a moment from now. Here's what it actually looks like if we press pause and stop time right now.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:04:02]:
So we're gonna, like, freeze frame. Your brain is asking itself, figuratively speaking. The last time I was in a situation similar to this, where I was experiencing these similar sights, sounds, smells, what happened next? What did I feel next? What did I do next? Your brain is literally changing the firing of your neurons in advance of the sensory data that it's predicting will arrive. Let's use the example of when you're thirsty. When you're thirsty, you drink water, and then you're not thirsty anymore. Your thirst is quenched. Except it takes twenty minutes for the water in your stomach to make its way into your bloodstream to communicate with your brain that there is a change in the osmolality of your blood. Your thirst is quenched twenty minutes before your brain actually receives the sensory data to confirm hydration levels have been restored.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:05:11]:
Your brain is creating your experience before it even knows whether or not you are hydrated properly. This is because your brain has a lifetime of experiences where it learned the statistical relationship between making certain motor movements, like drinking, and the result in having your thirst quenched. Your brain is always predicting what will happen and comparing it to what it observes. Predict, compare, predict, compare. This efficient predictive process is your brain's default way of navigating the world and making sense of it. It generates predictions to perceive and explain everything you see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. For example, right now, it may seem to you as if you're simply listening to me speak on the podcast. But truth booth, your brain is using your past experience with English so that you can predict and understand every word that's coming out of my mouth.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:06:19]:
Now imagine you're hearing a language that you've never heard before. It will sound like noise with zero meaning. You might not even know, like, where the breaks are between words. That's because your brain doesn't have prior experience it can use to predict and make sense of those sounds that you're hearing. Your brain predicts using your past experience based on similar situations to create meaning. This is why, if your past experiences are when life is going awesomely for you, something bad always happens immediately after, and you're completely caught off guard. Then, when your brain receives sensory data that matches life is going awesomely, you will naturally be looking for, Uh-oh, what bad thing is going to happen? And how can I make sure that I'm prepared for it? But what if your brain predicted something bad is going to happen, but nothing does? Life is still going awesomely, and your perfectionist brain decides to go with its original prediction. Something bad is going to happen.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:07:32]:
So what you are experiencing is very different from what's actually happening in reality. Like, life is going awesomely, and the night before, your entire family is getting immunizations for the upcoming vacation you have planned. You see an email and it says, Your health insurance has been canceled. Except the email actually said, Your health insurance has been confirmed. But you read it as canceled because your perfectionist brain decided to go with its original prediction. When life is going awesomely, something bad always happens, and I'm completely caught off guard. In that moment, when you're reading the email as my health insurance has been canceled, what you are experiencing is not reality. This is where perfectionists use their brain wrong.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:08:32]:
As a perfectionist, we have this unique ability to imagine what could be, and we also have the compulsion to make it happen. This is what scientifically separates perfectionists from pedestrians, a. K. A. People who are not perfectionistic. That ability is an asset, and it becomes a liability when the what could be drifts into the dystopian horror of every possible way things could potentially go wrong and I could die. Your brain starts predicting an endless parade of potentially awful, horrible, no good scenarios. What runs through your perfectionist brain is if I just ruminate and catastrophize hard enough, then I can solve all of my problems before they become real.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:09:25]:
Like, this is actually, like, super smart of me to be doing this. Except this is completely and totally wrong. This would be like conducting a research study and skipping the part where you actually collect the data. Instead, your perfectionistic brain makes up pretend data and gives you fake results that you use to make your wildly inaccurate conclusions. This is a problemo because the catastrophizing, ruminating, and overthinking is creating distress for you, even when the scenario is no longer happening, never happens, or isn't even possible. This is like doing the research study without collecting any data, coming to conclusions you completely made up, and then getting very upset by the fake conclusions that you created. The tragic irony here is the more you overthink, the easier you make it for your brain to overthink. Why is this? Because your brain is always using your past experience to make sense of your immediate future, which becomes your present.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:10:37]:
So like, the more frequently you've catastrophized in the past, the more easily your brain uses it to predict what to do in your present. You're digging deeper trenches in the well worn neural pathways you've created. You're unintentionally weaponizing your most powerful tool against yourself. Here's how you know that this is happening for you. If you experience any of the following: being rigid in your routines and relationships, being overly controlling, not knowing when to stop, excessively checking your email, avoiding, especially avoiding activities you're not excellent at, reassurance seeking, difficulty making decisions, people pleasing, over repairing, procrastinating, criticizing yourself, extreme organizing or list making, failure to delegate. If you are experiencing any of those symptoms above, here's what you can do about it. Your brain predicts and prepares your actions using past experiences. Now, it's impossible for us to get in a time machine and to go back before you have ever ruminated, overthink, or catastrophized.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:11:58]:
But right now, with some effort, you can change how your brain will predict in the future so that you are no longer on this autopilot of overthinking, catastrophizing, and ruminating. How you do this the way that you change how your brain will predict in the future is you deliberately shift your brain's attention to something new. Like when you're in a coaching session with me and I ask you a question that disrupts your neural network. It's that moment where you free yourself from the chains of autopilot and you begin to rewire your brain for accuracy. When you have a habit of overthinking, ruminating, or catastrophizing, it's incredibly difficult to deliberately shift your brain's attention to something new because 95% of the time, you don't have that conscious awareness. You are doing it, which is why I created the perfect start single coaching session, where you can experience rewiring your brain for accuracy and breaking the chains of autopilot for yourself. If you're interested in that, you can go to courtneylovegavin.com/rewire. What I love about this and what clients love about this is how it directs your brain towards the kinds of experiences you would like to have happen in the future.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:13:39]:
Instead of excessively worrying and agonizing about what you don't want to happen. This is actually how I got into rewiring for perfectionistic brains because I because vintage CLG had thirty plus years of extreme and violent overthinking, ruminating, and catastrophizing. The strategies, solutions, therapists' tools, etcetera, didn't work permanently. I did all the trial and erroring for you and created this patented, proven, neuroscience backed methodology of rewiring specifically designed for perfectionistic brains. I built it because there wasn't anything else out there that that does this, permanent forever changes, because we're actually making these changes inside your brain. I like to joke and call myself a neuroplastician. It's like surgery on your brain without doing brain surgery. We don't have to open it up.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:14:41]:
But we can actually change the way it works. When you're using your perfectionistic brain wrong, when you're turning the asset that we have as perfectionists into a liability, and you know that you're experiencing it as a liability if you're being rigid in your routines and relationships, you're being overly controlling, you're not knowing when to stop, you're excessively checking your email, you're avoiding especially activities that make you uncomfy or that you feel that you're not excellent at, you are constantly seeking reassurance, you have difficulty making decisions, you're people pleasing, you're overpreparing, you're procrastinating, you're lists on lists on lists, or you have a failure to delegate. That's how you know when you're using your perfectionistic brain wrong. And the solution is to rewire. But what if our brain issues an incorrect prediction, notices the mistake? Like, it's not ignoring it. It notices the mistake, and it freaks the eff out over it. Or what if your range of possible predictions has been eclipsed by the extremes of a spectrum, also known as black and white thinking? The answers to these questions and what gets in the way of rewiring happening are inside the next episode of Perfectionism Rewired. Until then, take care.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:16:07]:
Bye. Listen up. Taking charge of your perfectionism is so much easier than you have been led to believe. Whether you wanna stop playing out worst case scenarios in your head or be joyfully present ambitious again, you don't need more rigid rules, guesswork, or hard work in perfectionism recovery. You need a framework that helps you understand and most importantly, rewire your perfectionistic habits from the inside out. It starts inside of perfectionism optimized. Besides the obvious mental health and wellness benefits, rewiring your perfectionism is the fastest way to figure out what's really underneath your perfectionistic patterns. This radically different proven proprietary approach helps you succeed by dropping the contempt and judgment that blocks change.

Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:17:00]:
Discover how to trust yourself, take control of your world, and feel truly empowered to own your perfectionism instead of being owned by it. Head on over to courtneylovegavin.com and start your transformation today.